Understanding that the Central Nervous System causes the problem is the first step to finding better tools for your child. Other equally effective therapies are available, including Neurofeedback , which have virtually no known side effects.
As shocking as this sounds, the average physician has not had one course in nutrition. Numerous research studies demonstrate that our Western diet is associated with increased symptoms of ADHD in kids. Changes in diet and nutrients can have a huge impact on focus and self-regulation. Irritants and deficiencies can wreak havoc on the Central Nervous System CNS and can cause someone to be highly unfocused.
Identifying through lab work what are things that could be irritating your systems, such as food or environmental toxins, or missing nutrients, can be a real game-changer in supporting the brain to self-regulate. Neurofeedback is a highly researched and effective treatment for ADHD , as documented through 3, peer-reviewed studies.
Through the use of computers, brain functioning is monitored, and that live feedback is shown to the client. They are trained to promote or reduce different brainwave frequencies; then the brain is rewarded for changing its activity to produce more appropriate patterns. These changes result in symptom reduction, as the brain learns to self-regulate.
Research demonstrates that Neurofeedback reduces symptoms up to 90 percent of the time. With the reduction of symptoms though teaching the brain to self-regulate, children and teens can be the best possible version of themselves. Over time, they can learn new ways to approach or manage a situation or task, especially when they lack executive functioning skills.
Executive functioning training, study skill support, social skills training, emotional and behavioral support and academic remediation are all common areas that children and teens with ADHD are lagging. Finding executive functioning interventions can be challenging, but children and teens with attentional, learning, social, or behavioral issues.
That pairing of regulating the nervous system with new learning is the foundation of Dr. This takes time and guidance and starting with a psychotherapist for child and parent coaching is the way to go. The good news is that children and teens with ADHD are often very intelligent and capable of learning, they just need direct skillset instruction. Whether the issue is a minor issue that keeps coming up and limiting your kids success or they are in crisis learning new skills is an important part of Dr.
There are several different formulations of ADHD medications , designed to last from about 4 hours immediate release to 12 hours delayed release. Any possible side effects , like loss of appetite or trouble sleeping, also stop when the child stops taking the medication.
In over 50 years of using stimulant medications to counteract the symptoms of ADHD, and hundreds of studies, no negative effects of taking the medication over a period of years have been observed.
In recent years Nora Volkow, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and her colleagues have done a number of imaging studies to better understand how ADHD, and the medication used to treat it, affect the brain.
In they compared the brains of kids with ADHD before and after a year of treatment with stimulant medications. The studies showed an increase in the density of dopamine transporters—those molecules that take dopamine out of action—in the brain after treatment.
This suggests that the increase of dopamine stimulated by the medication may have prompted the brain to develop more dopamine transmitters to clear it away. How long that change might last is not clear, as the level of transporters in the brain fluctuates. But it could result, researchers note in their conclusion, in the medication not working as well as it had to reduce symptoms over the long run.
This is a subject of disagreement among clinicians and researchers. For many children the same dose adjusted for growth continues to work for many years.
While the dose increases are modest, they are not just a result of children growing. But over the 13 following months, many of the children had their dosage modified to continue to get the full benefit of the medication. The average increase per unit of body weight was These findings are interpreted differently by different researchers, some seeing evidence that kids developed tolerance for the medication, other not.
Roy Boorady , MD, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at the Child Mind Institute, says he often increases the dosage within the first several years of treating a child. But after 15 or 16, I find that kids end up needing less, not more. The child gets more aware of what the medication does and might want more of that feeling.
Hinshaw, professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, notes that sometimes after years of effective treatment, a patient with ADHD needs to switch to a medication based on a different stimulant, say from Concerta to Adderall, to maintain the effect. A big concern about ADHD medication is the worry that kids who take them will be at higher risk for substance abuse when they are older.
Social skills, school performance, family interactions are emotionally years delayed. Teachers do not like to teach boys because they are naturally fidgety. Parents are to busy these days to spend time on executing behavioral issues. Also, what is adding another drug going to do with the development of the frontal lobe? Alcohol and drugs seem to affect proper formation of this important function. With all due respect Ms.
Patel, if, like us, you have a wonderful child who suffers from significant ADHD symptoms, you will have none of these concerns.
While yes, changing schools can help a lot, meds are warranted in cases like ours — if just to learn how to take care of his household responsibilities. Chronic abdominal pain is also a side effect that forced us to switch meds. One problem I have seen with this diagnosis is the reservations parents have with putting their child on this type of medicine.
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